Monday, 16 August 2010

Peterloo: 191 years ago today

Today is the anniversary of the Peterloo massacre, when pro-democracy and anti-poverty protesters in Manchester were brutally murdered by mercenaries and cavalrymen in the service of the British government. The aftermath of the day led to an acceleration in the progress of suffrage in Britain (and more directly, to the formation of the Guardian newspaper).

Brits: there's a reason why they stuck to Henry the Eighth and the Empire in school. They want us to be proud, but not about this sort of thing. We need to remember that there's another history of Britain, a history of poverty and disenfranchisement and the struggle for workers' rights and women's rights, the struggle against slavery at home and abroad.

I learnt about it, but only as context for some of the poetry of Shelley.

Sonnet: England in 1819

An old, mad, blind, despised, and dying king,Princes, the dregs of their dull race, who flowThrough public scorn, mud from a muddy spring,Rulers who neither see, nor feel, nor know,But leech-like to their fainting country cling,Till they drop, blind in blood, without a blow,A people starved and stabbed in the untilled field,An army, which liberticide and preyMakes as a two-edged sword to all who wieldGolden and sanguine laws which tempt and slay;Religion Christless, Godless a book sealed;A Senate, Time's worst statute unrepealed,Are graves, from which a glorious Phantom mayBurst, to illumine our tempestuous day.

Add me to the people who were taught this in school - Peterloo, the Chartists, the role of the Corn Laws in the Irish Famine, the Suffragettes, the Union movement, all that stuff... Mind you, this was in Scotland twenty years ago.

I studied it the blanketeers and chartists as part of the National Curriculum at GCSE. It's all there, it just depends on what your teacher chooses from the topic choices and whether you choose history of course.

Not sure whether it necessarily did accelerate the progress of greater suffrage. I think that statement probably needs to be followed with 'discuss'. My hunch is that it was highly symbolic but not specifically important in terms of most of what happened afterwards.

In general, the 19th century certainly showed the self-interested ideological flexibility of the British ruling class in all its glory.

But wouldn't it have been odd if it hadn't happened? The bridge a km from my home was fought over by Cromwell and co. A nation is always born in conflict.

What becomes interesting is who was there? Who had an ancestor on either side? Who has done the trace and found their birth certificates.

And don't wimp out now. In NZ, the Maori can trace their forefathers back to the original 7 canoes (8th Century). That's what it means to be Maori. To trace your whakapapa right back to the first waka (canoes). And with every fallen hero on every battlefield from mid-1800's when we Brits arrive.

Do you know your ancestry? Do you have any inkling of the ancestry of the person sitting next to you? Any notion how your stories are intertwined and what makes them such human stories?

And from 1606 to 1799 Scottish miners were serfs, bought and sold with the pits they worked in. Nothing about that in history lessons 40 odd years back and still very little today. It was only family history research, mentioned in the last comment, that showed me that my ancestors, from 1641 to 1799, were what might more robustly be called slaves.

I was taught about Peterloo - enough to know that the Yeomanry, who carried out the charge, weren't mercenaries - and it wasn't in Manchester or pre-National Curriculum either, so the inference of a grand plot to keep the history books blemish-free doesn't really hold up to scrutiny.

Courtesy of the class-obsessed Welsh Joint Exam Board, I got the Merthyr Rising rammed down my throat *seven* times during my education. The Roman occupation was a blessed relief. Well, if you see what I mean.

That's a sweeping statement not based on facts. I was educated under Thatcher and I was certainly taught about; Peterloo, Great Reform Act, Chartism, Matchgirls Strikes and Suffragettes and so on. In fact the only things I wasn't told taught about in any great detail, were that actual wars themselves and Empire.

About 70 years ago, the democratically elected mayor of my city was shoot in a ditch, like many other people, whose charges were being loyal to the democratic government, union members, writers, politicians, teachers, or just "reds".

196 more people were shoot at the cemetery's wall. No plaque remebers that.

And in the common graves, in the forests or road ditches, thousands of corpses still await to be found, identified and give to their relatives.

Penny Red is...

Laurie Penny, 25, journalist, author, feminist, socialist, utopian, general reprobate and troublemaker. Lives in a little hovel room somewhere in London, mainly eating toast and trying to set the world to rights. Drinks too much tea. Has still not managed to quit smoking. Regular writer for New Statesman, The Guardian and The Independent. Author of Meat Market (Zer0 Books, April 2011) and Penny Red (Pluto Press, October 2011).

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